Talk:Heritability of autism

autistic parents and their children
If autism isn't passed down to children, does that mean that whether the father or mother has that disorder, that none of their children (male or female) will have said autism. I know that it's more common in boys than girls. If the father has an x-linked dominant disorder, all his daughters will have the same disorder. If the mother has a certain x-linked dominant disorder, half of her sons will have it. --Evope (talk) 20:59, 31 August 2019 (UTC)Evan Kalani Opedal
 * @Evope: As the article explains, autism is heritable but can also be linked to spontaneous mutations. Further, the genes associated with autism known today increase the likelihood of having autism (as in: meeting the diagnostic criteria for a diagnosis such as autism spectrum disorder) but it's not a strong relationship as in "if a person has that specific genetic feature, then they're autistic". That's true even for monogenic syndromes that are associated with the autism spectrum, see Syndromic_autism. Hence, non-autistic parents can have autistic children and autistic parents can have non-autistic children, even if the parent's autism is linked to a known monogenic condition that is always passed on.--TempusTacet (talk) 10:40, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Autistic children don't have autistic parents? Really?
"Why are parents of autistic children typically non-autistic?" Is there any evidence for this? I know many cases where at least one parent got a diagnosis after their child did. Obviously, nowadays it's much more probable do be diagnosed with autism spectrums disorder than some decades or even years ago.
 * If autism affects 1% of the population, and the parents of autistic people are 4900% more likely to get autism than the general population, that still would mean the parents of autistic children are non-autistic even if they are drastically more likely to be autistic. Chamaemelum (talk) 18:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding to that, I believe the impression that a lot of parents of autistic children learn that they're autistic themselves is due to a sampling/selection bias. For non-autistic parents of autistic children there is much less incentive to talk/write/communicate about their experience than for parents that (often unexpectedly) discovered something important about themselves and might start to interact with autism-related groups, online content etc.--TempusTacet (talk) 10:48, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The SLC7A5 gene has been associated with autism
The SLC7A5 gene has been associated with autism in some studies; see the Talk page of that gene. Cheers, --CopperKettle (talk) 14:03, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology Capstone
— Assignment last updated by Rahneli (talk) 20:28, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

multigene vs rare mutations
@Chamaemelum: This edit introduced an ambiguity, as the sentence you edited now reads: "Autism has a strong genetic basis, although the genetics of autism are complex ; autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is explained  more  by multigene interactions or by rare mutations with major effects." It's unclear what more refers to. Previously it said that it was unclear which of the two was more relevant. Could you please rephrase the sentence to reflect the current state of knowledge?--TempusTacet (talk) 09:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I will fix it. It fact my changes makes it not only unclear, but grammatically wrong 😬. Sorry. Chamaemelum (talk) 16:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Fixed, thanks! Chamaemelum (talk) 17:02, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Chamaemelum Thanks for the fix and the updates! While I have your attention, could you please weave in a link to syndromic autism? I believe this term should be mentioned and linked in the paragraph talking about fragile X syndrome and monogenic disorders etc. I don't feel qualified to do it myself and I'm not sure about the precise terminology (see Talk:Syndromic_autism, maybe you can answer the questions raised there?).--TempusTacet (talk) 17:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)